We are afraid to love out of fear someone doesn’t love us back. So we settle for questionable likes because you can’t lose something that was never yours to begin with.

We are afraid to be the one who cares too much out of fear the other person won’t meet us halfway. So we settle for someone we won’t ever care too much for.

We are afraid to fall for the right person because then we’d have something to lose. So we choose the wrong guys just because.

We are all so afraid to get hurt. So we carelessly hurt one another becoming desensitized to pain almost expecting it. Because if you are anticipating the worst then you won’t be surprised.

We are afraid to fall too fast or too hard. So we don’t let ourselves. Pining for relationships that might look and feel like the real thing but it isn’t.

Settling isn’t a result of lack of confidence. We settle because the day we stop we suddenly find someone right, that’s the person who could hurt us the most.

That relationship so valuable. That person we built up in our mind we wondered even existed. Happiness because of someone’s presence. We meet them and have something suddenly to lost.

We settle not because we don’t want to find that but because we’re afraid of finding it and losing it.

We are afraid of letting someone that close. We are afraid to be that vulnerable. I think all of us are a little bit afraid of falling in love.

When you fall for someone you know is probably going to hurt you, someone toxic, an almost relationship, the casual one, yeah those feelings are real and no one can deny that you care but there’s a different feeling when you’re falling for someone who is right for you and someone who reciprocates everything. I think so many girls choose the wrong relationships out of fear of getting the right one.

When you find yourself in the right relationship with someone who cares just as much and meets you halfway and wants to be with you as much as you want to be with them and suddenly you start building this life together, that’s when it will hurt if ever you lose them.

When you wake up every single day next to the same person. When you’re used to having meals with the same person. When you’re so consumed by one person in a room that’s packed and all your attention is on them. When you get used to talking to someone every day. When you’re used to sleeping with just one person. When you begin to learn each other so well, you pick up on their habits and phrases. When you look back at your past and the people in it and you realize this person is better than anyone who came before. When you finally find that type of relationship, that’s something so valuable we’re all afraid to lose it.

You can’t lose something that was never yours but what happens when you do lose something that was.

You become so afraid of getting that hurt again. So instead of pinning after a relationship with those standards and expectations to match your previous one, you settle.

But it’s those chances you need to take and it’s those expectations you need to hold true to having. Because one day it’s isn’t a goodbye you’ll expect but that hello every single morning.

“Losing you would be like losing part of me, only it’d be losing the best part of me.”

“Even if your voice is shaking, never stop asking for what you want.”

Kirsten’s writings really touch me. It’s like all the things I have ever thought of or wanted to say are expressed through her writing. I resonate with so much of it. It’s so deeply touching, moving, raw and just plain real. There were times reading I teared up because something said just went straight to my heart. I think I honestly highlighted almost the whole book! —Elizabeth